Emptiness

I ache.

Over emptiness.

Not my emptiness, no. I have life, mercy of mercies.

Partly, I ache because there is emptiness. Because as I move through life at a trot, I often feel like the landscape is littered by people I love, scattered out like spent shells. Because where there should be life, and love, and liberty, there is just this horror of stillness...

But mostly, I ache because there are too many 60 second stretches in a day, when I do nothing about it. 
The emptiness, I mean.
I won't even run down all of why...

Just this, tonight:

The entirety of my life is to be spent doing one of two things:

Gaining strength,

or giving it.


All else breeds emptiness. Is emptiness.

The Miracle That Isn't

Seeing that we were created in the image of the Highest, it makes sense that sympathy with Divinity, identification with the heart of God, would be life at it’s best. 

I daily aspire. 

But is that aspiration alone enough to water the ground where this miracle grows?

Or wait... Is it really a miracle?

I remember slipping between the sheets after a string of days full of giving, and asking if I might be made more sensitive, more sympathetic, more caring about the things on God’s own heart…

--only for my soul to hear this whisper: 

For that, you need no miracle. Just time. I can’t do your part and Mine.

It is not easy to find sufficient time for communion when on the trot. I’m not going to lie. 

It is only barely easier to find time for communion when at home. 

But of this I have become convinced: 

Activity is no substitute for communion. 

"O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself:
it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Jeremiah 10:23

One Life To Give

I’m sitting in my own room, long before sunrise, on my own bed, lost in my own thoughts. You know a summer has been extraordinary when your own space feels extraordinary. When you’ve used your pillow just 11 nights of the past 84.

I’ve made a lot of new friends in the past 12 weeks. Flown a lot of miles. Preached a lot of sermons. Prayed a lot. Trembled a lot. Looked back towards the light. A lot. Loved a lot of broken lives. Witnessed a lot of salty tears.

But sitting here, I have a refrain much like Jeremiah’s running through my head.

"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.”  [Jeremiah 9:1]

Oh that I could do more, be more, weep more.
The sheer magnitude of fear in the world is enough to make the bravest man pause at times. The sheer magnitude of pain. The constant white (black?) noise of performance without transformation.

I’m not afraid though. I just wish there were more hours in the day. I wish there were more beats of my heart. I wish I had more lives at my command to spend spreading light, and clawing away at pain. I wish my heart were large enough to hold a piece of the sorrow of every person I love without imploding. Or wait… It is. But barely.

Once again, this stunning limitation settles into my consciousness.
I have only one life to live. Only one chance to love the hurting world.

Oh, let every breath count.

The Great Clarifier

[Jeremiah 7]

I like knowing where I’m headed.
And what’s more, I prefer to know how to get there.

That’s not always a reality though. And when it isn’t, I wonder why…

"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. 
Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?"

One possible (Biblical) cause for confusion and indirection? Self-service.

The service of Christ directs, clarifies, confirms, and comforts.

Whose servants ye are.

Something Deeper?

[Jeremiah 6]

"Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord."

Neither could they blush.

I have a question. (an honest wondering, not a rhetorical one.)



When I was little there were lots of words we wouldn’t even whisper. No, not the expletives. I’m talking about words with legitimate use in the english language, but which in our young minds fell well below the standard for polite company… So we’d be rattling along in a sentence, and suddenly stop short, and be like “You know… THAT.” [insert deeply loaded knowing look here.] And sagacious little playmate would stop to stroke his smooth chin, widen eyes a bit at even the implication of THAT, shake his head slowly as if to say “Be real careful there, partner!", and…
The sentence would finish strong. Right around said placeholder. No further articulation necessary.

Hey, it worked, didn’t it?
Don’t tell me we were the only ones…

My question is, what happened to that?
What happened to cheeks that would suddenly flame crimson at the hearing of a “naughty" word? Or boys who thrice filtered even innocent children’s talk when around “a lady.” Or, girls that would blush when uncovered? Or that held a graceful line carved in stone that said thus far and no further? 

Or was that all just old-fashioned?

Has this generation, obsessed with being “comfortable in our own skin” gained a "higher level of self-awareness,” and self-confidence, but lost something deeper?

For The Sake Of Just One

[Jeremiah 5]

The ancient city has filled her cup. Vice runs down the streets like sewage, and the dishonor is enough. Love will mercifully let her go in a storm of raining fire. And her ashes may never be positively identified. Such is the lot of Sodom.

One man stumbles out though, one man and two daughters, themselves tainted by the derangement of the place. The wife they leave just outside the city, a saline statue perfect in detail, with the longing eyes of a woman torn from her treasures.

More amazing to me than the epic destruction though, is the fact that God would have saved the city, if He could have found nine more men. Just nine.

And more amazing yet; that as history progresses, so grows His mercy.

Ten men would have saved Sodom. A booming metropolis wreaking with vice. I don’t know how many people lived there, but I know this: 10 men would have been the remnant of the remnant.

But run through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, generations later. “The joy of the whole earth,” where vice runs in the gutters, and children are offered as sacrifices to the gods, and incense burns, and chants are heard, and all is iniquity. All that should be music to the ears of God is turned to blasphemy.

"Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof,

if ye can find a man, 

if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth;
and I will pardon it"

Never underestimate what Divinity will do for the sake of just one.

Thy Fallow Ground

[Jeremiah 4]

Before the rain, must come the harvest. I’m reminded every time I’m home on the farm, and either farmer brother or father-in-law is late to supper, because a storm is coming…

Harvest is not the only thing timed for the rain though.
Before the rain must come the plowing, the planting…

How else is Heaven’s blessing to be received deep?

Before the blessing must come the breaking.
Before the planting must come the plowing.
Before the green shoot, the steel blade.
Before the crowning, the cutting.

"Break up your fallow ground... Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart.” Jer. 4:3, 4

The rain is coming.

The Cost of Fidelity

[Jeremiah 3]
She stumbles in again, after the night of wandering. (Yet another.)
Like always, He’s been sitting up, waiting. She’s defiled the ground under the last tree on on the mountain, with another relationship that only lasted an hour. He’s been waiting outside His front door, staring into the starlight. She’s not the kind of person any of us would want to spend our lives with, but He is not like us…

She returns with a torn soul,
He awaits with strong arms.

And His words aren’t what she deserves.

"I am married unto you.

...and I will bring you to Zion" 
(Jeremiah 3:14)

For God, fidelity is not a response. It is an identity.

Chasing a Dream

They wander as though blind, hands out front to meet the future. They go down to Egypt to drink; leave full of fluid, but thirsty still, have to try Assyria. Their pursuits are without profit. They feel the dread throb of guilt, but they stubbornly claim innocence.
Shall these live? Are these even alive?

“My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:13

They have forsaken the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
And built themselves a counterfeit.

Have we?

We who would consult contemporary culture when interpreting an Ancient Script? Is this the Way?
We who would bend truth (if we accept the concept of truth at all) to the hearer, instead of bending the hearer to Truth?
We who think to pursue meaning and fulfillment on our own terms, instead of recognizing that defining purpose is a Designer’s prerogative. Can this wandering really be called life?

Or is Christendom chasing a dream?

We are warned.

To Be Ignored

So, I slip past familiar words I've read a hundred times, quoted more. This fitting start to the hymnal of the old world--

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, not standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful..."

Like a grade school teacher I ask the right questions, wait for the answers. (myself also the pupil.)

The scornful? Probably scorners. Skeptics. Profane men that divorce God from His creation, make the truth about life a lie, set themselves above the law of the universe, claim progress but at the same time destroy meaning by destroying origin and destiny... Yeah, don't mind them.
Ungodly, same thing.

You skipped one.
Did I?

Pray tell, who are the sinners?
These others thrown in with those whose companionship, counsel, and cowardice I should avoid?

How about me.

I am a sinner.
And insomuch, my counsels to myself should be ignored.

I take counsel from, pleasure in, strength of,
gain wisdom through, live life by,

the benevolent law.

Ten Years and What Matters

Something stirs and I turn left at the end of the paved pathway flanked by lawn in winter colors. A left that takes me right away from my accustomed quiet corner. Away, but towards something strangely and warmly familiar...

I think I might find it... Through wispy grass and a forest that's since been thinned.
True as the sunrise, there it is. The top stones have tumbled down the hill a way, but the foundation is still here. It only takes a moment, and a ten-year old altar has been restored.

Ten years.

Ten years ago I encountered God for myself on this hillside as a boy, and we struck up a friendship that has become the reason I breathe.

Much-Afraid gathered homely little stones.
I just build the altars.
At every page turn, I've turned, built another.

I stand and look, thoughts afar. Reaching back for what sort of prayers I prayed here, who my friends were when last I knelt here, what my goals were when I left here to build new...
And I remember. I remember the next...

I stop to count.
Seven altars. Ten years.
I'll find them all today.

There's something priceless about the remembering. The whole trek will take me an hour and a half. To all the places witness to the forever moments in my experience. The hallowed ground where God was always waiting to keep an appointment, where I trembled and triumphed, and learned to trust Him absolutely.

I wander and emotions sometimes flood, but after I've been up and over, down the draw and past ground I haven't covered in a decade, one question throbs--

Not whether or not I found my dreams.

I want to know whether or not I've fulfilled His.

Take it from me, 10 years later.
This is all that matters. 

Words With the Father

That moment when the endless empty makes you realize how small you are, how big the world is, (much less the universe.) and how unreasonably kind God is for still having eyes for me.

"Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,'

even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!"

(Psalms 139:7-12, 17-18, 23-24. ESV)

Plenty Full

I esteem that audacity which leads brave men to "crave the fire's embrace," if only through it they might come to know God...

(For it is true that a day of hardship imparts more strength to the soul than a month of sunshine.)

But after today, I've had a change of mind as concerns just how men (and women) should pursue the treasure imparted by tears. Once, that is, faith has made them steel enough to do so.

Pray not for pain or hardship.
The world is plenty full of both.

Pray you'll have the heart to suffer with another's.

When their hardship becomes my pain, then God can heal the both of us.

Triumph [Like a Pearl]

It is the triumph of the Christian faith that it enables its followers to suffer and be strong...

To maintain a grip of steel, then willingly give.
To love, and lose, and dare to love again.
To believe in promises while relinquishing the right to personal claims.
To accept tears as glittering gifts.

To believe that I am perfectly loved, even when suffered to drink anguish.
To perfectly love what (Who) I don't understand.

It is triumph.
To suffer softly. To remember that His feet are washed best with tears. To remember He has never once made a mistake. To remember there is a reason I am trusted with every sorrow.
To remember His name is made great when His children love Him anyway.

-  -  -

Now it's my turn. My turn to stand in the bottom of the grave and help tuck in the treasure. Me thinking this is the worst kind of personal loss-- watching some of "my people" lose something beloved. We work in silence. Wind blows and dust flies, and just like her name, around a speck of a thought layer after layer of luster is laid, while I contemplate Love.

I remember the last group ride; remember my turn on the brilliant beast while the trusted friend worked a kink out of her older sister. They're both gone now, the Diamond and the Pearl, sister jewels black as stellar space.

Like a little boy about Christmas time my mind scratches at the cold blast of circumstances has build on the windows-- the windows of my heart. The boy might be wondering the price of the Christmas Lionel caboose. I'm looking for the same thing I always look for first. Searching for where love might be hiding its best, right about now.

Silent and strong as always, friend-more-like-brother works on the other side of the cavernous hole, till the job is done.
Our girls, out little sisters; they've lost their friends, also sisters. (is that what makes us family?)

Later, after thoughts and words and prayers and tears have finished their work for the day, what is left is a lesson worthy of the gift through which it came.

But of course; Faith doesn't mean that if I believe hard enough, pray hard enough, I'll love the outcome.

 Faith is believing I'm loved, regardless of the outcome.

Thanks girls. For all kinds of beautiful memories, and for standing up tall and graceful.
And trusting Merciful God. Again.
And thanks friend, for letting me love her too.

The Gospel

It's not just a story.
It's what we live and breathe.

The gift. The giving.

How simple. How utterly, overwhelmingly profound and powerful.

And if I really believe it, then I will necessarily live it out too.

I stand with eyes closed and smile soft as the first rays of the morning sun warm my face, and my office.
And it strikes me that this warmth cost the sun some fuel.

A star's slow death powers life for a race. --for an entire system of whirling planets and moons.

      "...Life to the receiver; death to the giver."
                   "But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."*

The Gospel.
The Giving.
The way God lives.
And for our part, the way of living fully alive.

Of being honored to pass to others, through choosing death to myself,
the very Life of God.

Oh, I choose.
I do.

*Jackie Pullinger; John 12:24; 

Advantage of Suffering

Because it is not joy that brings the deepest communion, or the closest identification with Christ,

but sorrow.

Thanksgiving [Because I Belong.]

It occurs to me that without a few key gifts in this life, all others are rendered meaningless.

The eve of Thanksgiving. I flop into bed with Romans 8 on my heart, fresh from neighborhood youth Bible study.
And as I ponder, as I set to counting blessings once again, I suddenly see how this one gift makes all others worth counting...

You've read the stories-- Joe Wheeler style.
You know, the ones where some little orphan waits for Christmas, wants nothing more than someone to belong to. Someone to want them.

I've always read them with somewhat of an "awwww!, poor kid." reaction.

But you know, I've recently found out that that poor kid is me. 

- - -

I look up from my Bible and my friend's lip trembles, and I catch it in an instant, because my heart does the same.
It's this word-- "Debtor." 

I'm a debtor. Romans says so. (and my heart tells me the same.)
I've never seen more selfishness in the mirror in my life. Nor foolishness. Nor pettiness. Nor pride.
It's awful.
A debtor I am.

But right on the heels of this word with such weight, on this eve of Thanksgiving, comes this other word--

"Adoption."

I'm adopted.

I'm a debtor, not because I've sinned, but because I belong.

- - -

My head finds the pillow. My tears join my friend's.
I shake my head in silence, and though orphaned I should rightly be, I fly again at open arms.
And my Thanksgiving prayer is simple:


Thank You for wanting me.

- - -

Thanksgiving tradition: All kids in the kitchen. At once.

feast for the eyes

pilgrim zone

best ever: sharing the all-American holiday with Australian friends and sweet neighbors

no indians this year...

Because He is, was, does. [Glorious Fast - Part VIII]

"Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,

and thine health shall spring forth speedily:

and thy righteousness shall go before thee;

and the glory of the LORD shall [go behind thee]

Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer;

thou shalt cry and He shall say

'Here I am!'

Then shall thy light rise in obscurity

and thy darkness be as the noon day:

And the LORD shall guide thee continually,

and satisfy thy soul in drought.

And thou shalt be like a watered garden

and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places...

and thou shalt be called

'The repairer of the breach'"

Enough said. 

Light, and strength, and holiness. 

A front runner and a rear guard. 

A new name out of nowhere. 

A confident step. A satisfied soul.

An unfailing spring.

A rebuilder of dreams? 

God's dreams?

How can that even be?

Surely there must be more. 

More than brokenness. More than choosing to go hungry.

More than gut wrenching chain-cutting.

More than mercy with power to undo.

More than banishing fear with love.

More than following Him back to finish off my tormentors.

More than giving away my only slice of bread.

More than opening my arms to hold what's dying,

         to see it raised up, or love it till it's gone.

I mean, that's a lot. But that can't be all.

No, it isn't all. There's one more thing.

To realize that after all this, I'm still nothing, will always be nothing.

And I'm saved, and I get to help save, 

because He is, was, does, all this.

"Is this not the fast that I have chosen?"

Yes. 

And I choose it too.

Relentless Pursuit

We waste hours and days in pursuit of answers from God.

When the answer to every question is to be found in the pursuit of God.


That's what I learned this morning.

- - -

Memories from the past week, compliments of Instagram (seannebblett)

The sight sister and brother-in-law will see from their balcony in Oklahoma farm country

Reunion of 8 out of 10 sibs.

Stick up to the knee wall, post and beam from there.

Andrew working his chain saw art

balancing act, on a wobbly floor joist, with an iPhone

fabricating things most people buy from the hardware store

sparklers at Chantée and Luke's Oklahoma reception

uncomplicated. little ones. (love)

And off they go!

To Finish the Job [Glorious Fast - Part V]

"... and that ye break every yoke?..."

This is no halfway freedom we're talking about.

This is undeniably the most audacious face of the conflict--
It's grace, returning to finish the job.

Because "if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."

So it is that the trembling (but oh, so happy) child of God (only recently in chains) awakens one morning to a flurry of activity, and while yet rubbing sleep from the eyes an angel brushes by and says the Commander is waiting...

"For what-- 
        For me??"

Yes. Because just getting clear of the door of that prison is't enough for this General.
Today they're going back to crush the fortress to a thousand pieces.

And He wants to take me with Him.

So we set out. Me with my little coil of rope, and Him, strong as ten thousand times ten thousand bulldozers. And I look up in awe while we trek-- still thinking this is a dream. The One, the Invincible Soldier. The other, the admiring little boy, still in his pajamas...
And He looks down and smiles.

He doesn't need me.

But He glories in making the weak, strong.
            --in setting them over their enemies.



And after all, don't I know where the pillars in that place rest, better than most?